11.07.2007

Good theorist fallen amongst economists

Mark Fischer reports on the session with Neil Davidson

Perhaps Neil Davidson was slightly disappointed with the debate that followed his Friday July 6 meeting on 'Scotland, union and empire'. The comrade told us that he did not plan to discuss that current controversy around the Anglo-Scottish union, as on the morning of Sunday July 8 there was a meeting that explicitly addressed the question, 'Scotland - on the road to independence?'

Instead, he planned to deal with the origins of the union, the political dynamics on both side of the border that made it stick, despite widespread initial unpopularity in Scotland, and to demolish some nationalist "myths" that surround that "great betrayal" of 1707. And a very able and convincing job he did of it too, effectively revealing how much of what passes for 'history' amongst Scottish nationalist - of both the left and right variety - was simply a question of imposing perceptions and contemporary political and cultural categories on a very different past period in history.

However, if he was indeed a little put out, he should at least partially blame his comrade, Chris Bambery, who used his turn at the mike to update the debate. He started by telling us that he believed that there was "no argument that the unity of the working class in these islands depends on the British state."

The comrade seemed to go on to suggest that this idea - "that the unity of the working class requires the unity of the state" - was one particularly associated with post-1945 Labourism. This was a "craven and revolting" idea in our workers' movement.

Chris went on to identify Gordon Brown as the personification of this perfidious amalgam. From this, the comrade seamlessly slipstreamed into a line of argument that seemed to suggest that anyone who might think there was a "British identity" - even a politically conflicted one - was at one with Brown, together with his support of imperialist war and occupation. This might seem like a bit of a "long stretch", the comrade conceded - and he was right on that at least - but it was a legitimate political link to point to, he claimed.

"To have working class unity in these islands," comrade Bambery concluded, "it is not necessary to identify with the British state. I prefer to identify myself with the tradition of Connolly and Maclean "¦" He left the podium to a predictable round of applause and next it was my turn.

It is always difficult to speak in anything other than sound bites in debates at SWP meetings, so my contribution was not as clear as I would have liked. Nevertheless, I hope I got across some core arguments. First, that the historically constituted unity of the working class under the UK state was a progressive thing. Second, that there should be no question of Marxists being indifferent to that gain; it was something that we should fight to defend, using our own methods and with our own programme. Lastly, that despite the manifest nonsense that nationalism deployed in its efforts to legitimate itself, there was a real question to address here. The Welsh, the Scottish and the English might be recent inventions, but - having been invented - they were now real. Voluntary union in the form of a federal republic was the way forward, I suggested.

That sparked things up a tad. The arguments against me in the subsequent contributions fell under three broad categories.

'We're all the same really "¦'

One SWP comrade told us that the Scottish people separating from the union in a nationalist schism would "not be a defeat", as the ordinary people of the newly reconstituted states "would have the same grievances" after all. It was a "fallacy", said another comrade, to suggest that state divisions caused us a problem of any sort: "Since when have national borders stopped us?" she asked. The audience had sufficient sense not to applaud that idea, I'm pleased to report.

'They don't really mean it "¦'

OK, people might have "differentiated" themselves on the basis of saying "we want to be Scottish", said one SWPer, but that did not mean they were tainted by nationalism. She suggested they were simply motivated by concerns about the education system, but also the fact that "we don't want to have bombs thrown at us in Glasgow airport - we don't want to be identified as part of the British state" that occupies and brutalises Iraq.

The flipside of this profoundly bad argument did not seem to occur to her, or the audience, which - I am disappointed to report - gave her a stirring round of applause. That the response implies a notion that it is somehow more 'legitimate' to perhaps bomb Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted. For an organisation that played such a prominent role in organising and coordinating united, all-Britain, genuinely mass protests against the looming Iraq war, this is a political wobble at least.

Indeed, one SWPer went so far as to suggest that "any weakening of Britain "¦ is a progressive thing": a notion that comrade Davidson had specifically rejected when he talked of the illusions of the contemporary nationalists in Scotland.

'Independence won't happen anyway "¦'

Towards the end of the debate, one comrade baldly stated that separation was "just not on the cards". The reasons why people in Scotland or Wales were lulled into voting nationalist were basically sound.

As comrade Davidson himself put it in his reply to the debate, "Most people who vote SNP do not want independence "¦ the SNP did not campaign on a nationalist agenda. They campaigned on a leftwing agenda "¦ Salmond talked more about the war than about independence. This is not an accident, as he knows full well what will pull the votes in "¦ the social issues and the crisis of imperialism. That's what people voted for "¦"

This is criminally negligent nonsense. It does, however, illustrate something about the broader culture of the SWP and the way it maintains coherence. Decent SWP intellectuals like comrade Davidson occupy an analogous position in their organisation to the more talented of the Soviet academics in the latter part of the decline of that regime. While they can occasionally make worthwhile contributions at the level of more 'removed' theory - either in terms of history or philosophy, for example - the closer they approach the actually contemporary reality of their sect/society, the more theoretically incoherent they become.

Comrade Davidson needs to revisit some Marxist contributions about nationalism and its pernicious and persistent dangers. In fact, he might start with some of his own "¦